Well...

Remember how I gabbed about my purchase of this eye catching cook book? Well...

It has glossy pages, beautiful photographs that made my mouth water, and its attractive description "Vegetarian Recipes From My Parisian Kitchen" had me sold.  I kept thinking how this book would introduce me to new spice combinations and flavours and, since I am part French, familiarize me with a country I have yet to visit. 

Okay, I know this sounds a little odd for most people, but, for me, cookbooks are personal. Shopping for ingredients, preparing, cooking, etc is a serious time commitment so therefore I am picky about the books I purchase. 

Why the sorta dramatic intro? Well, I was disappointed with the results of the first two recipes I tried.

So last weekend was a four day weekend for me, and I decided to have a cooking extravaganza! I showed my prep work in a post last week and here is how the not-so-extravaganza went...

Let's start with the Eggplant and Fresh Tabbouleh. It looked appetizing and the ingredients sounded wonderful; fresh mint, basil and cilantro, red onion, eggplant, whole wheat couscous with a tahini, harissa, and lemon juice dressing. It was even featured in Shape magazine this month!

Well... I couldn't eat it. It wasn't edible. All I tasted was mint. What a waste of food and what a disappointment. It sounded fantastic but it was far from it. I won't even share the recipe because that's how much I care about you.

What have I learned from this? Basil and mint don't mix (unless it's followed by some rum), but, on the plus side, I now know how to prepare and cook eggplant. A small victory there, but still: strike one. 

The second recipe I attempted were the Rosemary Sables.

They were essentially fancy crackers made with goat cheese, honey, italian spices and whole wheat flour.  They were quite good, but, not palatable enough for me to spend another $7 on 300g of goat cheese.  I feel like I could have found a very similar box of crackers for the same price. Strike two.

Fortunately, I resorted to a tried and tested recipe for dessert (not from the above book), and it was pretty darn scrumptious. I made mini tartlets with a vegan custard topped with some fresh fruit and glossed with apricot jam. The pastry was flaky and light! Purchasing the mini tartlet pan kit from Williams and Sonoma (which provided the pastry recipe) was well worth it!

Click here to see the previous post on how the pastry was made:

Mini Tarts Pastry Recipe

by Williams-Sonoma Kitchens

Ingredients:

• 2 1/2 cups - all-purpose flour
• 2 tbsp of sugar
• 2 tsp salt
• 250 g of butter (or two sticks) cut in 1/4 inch pieces
• 6-8 tbsp of ice water

Directions:

• In a food processor, combine the flour, sugar and salt and pulse to combine. 
• Add the butter and pulse until the mixture resembles coarse meal. 
• Add the 6 tbsp of ice water and pulse twice. The dough should hold together when squeezed with your fingers but should not be sticky. (My dough ended up sticky but it still worked well)
• If it is crumbly add the remaining 2 tbsp of water and pulse twice between each tbsp of water.
• Turn the dough out onto a work surface and divide in half.
• Shape each into a disk.
• Wrap with plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least 2 hours or up to 2 days. 
• Preheat oven to 350 degrees. 
• Remove the dough from the fridge and let stand for 5 minutes.
• Place one disc of dough on a lightly floured surface and roll out 1/16 inch thick. 
• You must work fast with the dough however because once the dough gets too warm, it's not workable as it rips apart and gets too sticky. If this happens, put it back in the fridge for 15-20mins. 
• Cut out enough of the dough to place in tart shells. I have used it for the mini-tart pan and for individual larger tarts and the dough works very well. I had a tart cutter but if you don't, you can certainly take some dough and fill the tart molds quite easily. 
• If you have made a filling (quiche, cheesecake etc.. place it into each tart now)
• Bake the tart for 12 minutes, then rotate the pan 180 degrees. 
• Bake for another 10 mins (approximately) or until the tarts turn golden brown.
• With custard or pudding, you cannot bake it with the tarts, therefore, I pokes holes into the tarts before it was baked or you can put pie weights into each tart so that they don't puff up.
• Remove the tarts from the pan and place it on a cooling rack. 

I can't share the vegan custard recipe unfortunately but here is the recipe book that I picked it up from.

The recipe is called Strawberry Kiwi Creme Tart on page 111. I actually make this recipe every Christmas Eve. It's our tradition. What makes this custard unique is that it's made with cashews (soaked in water for at least 24 hours) instead of using cream with a unique binding agent called Agar Agar. It's a vegan gelatin option derived from a South East Asian seaweed. You can find this powder at Scoop n' Weigh on Taylor but be forewarned: it's pretty pricey at around $16 per 100 grams. Luckily, you only need 2 tablespoons for this recipe.

Here are some pictures of the baking process...

 All the ingredients in the blender to be smoothed out!

Final Product:

To wrap this up, the dessert was amazing. It was a hit when I brought left overs at work earlier this week. Unfortunately, the tabbouleh and crackers were a let down BUT I have hope for another recipe that I am planning to try out. After all, I don't want it to be three strikes in a row for this book.